My travel tastes include enjoying some interesting activities. Recently my wife and I spent 15 days cruising aboard the Carnival Splendor, with several port stops that included Grand Cayman Island. One of the coolest, free things to do include swimming with tarpon. The Paradise Restaurant, which sits at the edge of the water, also has a public marine park with steps from their outdoor area into the water. Five to six times daily, they feed the tarpon raw fish and chicken.

These daily feedings have “tamed” the tarpon to the point of the fish approaching any swimmer who enters their watery world. They are not aggressive at all, but do provide some great fun.

Port stops at Grand Cayman include “tendering” because of shallow waters.

Cruise ship visitors to Grand Cayman arrive by “port tenders” that carry 100 plus passengers from the ship’s offshore anchorage to one of the city’s docks. On the day of our arrival rough waters prevented the captain from anchoring in front of Georgetown. Instead, the ship went to Spotts Bay, on the other side of the island. Luckily Carnival and the city worked their magic and quickly put into place all of the necessary vans, taxis, excursion providers and even some beach vendors. Later in the morning, after we anchored at Spotts Bay two cruise ships with later arrival times than us were able to anchor in front of Georgetown, which provided the usual flood of people to enjoy Grand Cayman’s wealth of activities. Amazingly, few people know about the tarpon.

While in Georgetown Dawn, another hardcore cruiser aboard the Splendor told use about a unique place to buy “special” rum. Uhmm I wondered. What kind of place could she be talking about? After all, every cruise ship port plus the cruise ship itself has all kinds of rum.

Big Black Dick’s is the place Dawn lead us to, on main street, directly in front of the cruise ship tender docks. Upon entering the uniquely named establishment, someone offered samples of their unique rum — several flavors in fact. Not being a fan of alcohol, other than wine, I accepted the sample. After tasting the sample it became clear why the place was crowded — great tasting rum! In addition to the spirits, the store also offered several other items for travelers looking to bring home something they could not find anywhere else. I’m sure many of the items purchased here is a direct result of the branding and most likely became “gag” gifts.